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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28218513">What is the will of the force?</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/lunatic_jellybear/pseuds/lunatic_jellybear'>lunatic_jellybear</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Looking for Rings - Meta and other thoughts on George Lucas' Star Wars Hexalogy [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Analysis, Balance in the Force (Star Wars), Loss of Identity, Meta, Movie Interpretation, Slavery, The Force as a story telling device, The Jedi Order vs. attachment, consent negotiations</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 14:41:34</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>15,438</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28218513</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/lunatic_jellybear/pseuds/lunatic_jellybear</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>“In my experience, there is no such thing as luck.”</p><p>A small series of Star Wars meta-posts centered around the question what we can learn about the force, if we take Obi-Wan by his word and assume that Lucas placed every plot point and narrative development in his movies on purpose. In this case the force functions as an in-universe explanation for a morality led movie-narrative. Which means the force becomes equal to the will of the artist who punishes the characters for what is considered wrong and rewards them for actions considered right.</p><p>What the force considers right and wrong, through, is one of the most wildly speculated about questions in the fandom. The following is my contribution to this discussion.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Looking for Rings - Meta and other thoughts on George Lucas' Star Wars Hexalogy [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2066853</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Introducing the morality led movie-narrative</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The basis for argumentation in this little theory of mine is the thesis that the will of the force functions as an in-world explanation for a morality led movie-narrative. From the in-world perspective people in the GFFA have free will but their decisions and actions have consequences. If they transgress against the will of the force (i.e. what the movie-narrative deems morally right) they are punished, if they affirm the will of the force they are rewarded. For the characters that is a reality which they describe as “In my experience, there is no such thing as luck.”</p><p>A simple example: in Ep.5 Yoda explains that a Jedi should never attack and only ever use their weapon for self defense. It is easy to check if the narrative i.e. the force agrees with that and punishes people for starting a fight. The watchful observer will then learn that within Lucas’ six movies everyone who starts a duel by attacking first loses that fight. And I mean everyone, this doesn’t apply only to force sensitives but also to bounty hunters, aggressive idiots in bars and even Wampas! In all likelihood Lucas defined this rule during his time planning out Ep.5 &amp; 6. And years later, when he saw the chance, he removed the only exception to this rule from the Original Trilogy, which had found its way into the one movie, he had made before he defined this rule. I’m talking about Han Solo, of course. Han is supposed to win his duel with Greedo, therefore he must not shoot first! </p><p>My following thoughts on Star Wars and the meaning the story is trying to convey are based on the assumption that luck and coincidence play no part in the events that unfold, and that all consequences a character faces for his or her actions include a judgment by the force/narrative.</p><p>Additional disclaimer: I will only use the six Star Wars Movies made by Lucas as reference material and nothing of either the old or the new EU, since it is impossible to determine how much of the interpretation of the Star Wars story and the force by other artists lines up with the ideas Lucas wanted to express. That is not meant as a disparagement of the EU. There truly have been many wonderful story additions to the Star Wars Universe over the years. I see my attempt at analysis more like learning a language. I am trying to learn the language of the force, but I have to start with the classic text to learn the correct grammar before I can even begin to understand all the various dialects that exist besides the original which started it all.</p>
<h4>The circle narrative vs. cyclic in-world history</h4><p>The circle and by extension the sphere are an almost omnipresent symbol in the Star Wars movies. It is present in the many sunsets, council assemblies, deadly space stations, moons or the senate architecture. It also appears as the narrative structure of the movies. As Mike Klimo described so eloquently in his text 
<a href="http://www.starwarsringtheory.com/">"Ring Theory"</a>, Lucas used a very old narrative structure to build up his hexalogy. The linked text gives a very detailed introduction to the circle narrative (or Ring Composition as it is sometimes called) and explains how the Star Wars movies conform to it. I’ll only repeat the most important points in short but the full text is absolutely worth a read.</p><p>The circle narrative builds the basic narrative structure of many orally passed down myth, it is also present in many stories from the Bible and in antique works like “The Epic Cycle” about the Trojan War which includes the Iliad and the Odyssey. These kinds of stories are separated into two or more parts. The first half leads from the beginning towards the stories centerpiece which is similar in grandeur and narrative importance to the modern show-down or “finale” but it is positioned in the middle of the story. The second half brings the story to the end but it is crucial that this end links back to the beginning. (Very simple example: Odysseus starts his journey by leaving home and ends it by returning home.) In the same vein the sub-parts the story is divided in (stanzas or verses or, in the case of Star Wars, episodes) on the way to the middle correspond to the sub-parts in the second half moving away from the middle. This is often depicted visually as a A-B-C-C'-B'-A' structure.  This correspondence is highlighted by the use of recurring themes or rhymes or recurring story elements. Klimo's <a href="http://www.starwarsringtheory.com/">"Ring Theory"</a> lies out how the Star Wars movies extensively link the corresponding episodes together by using recurring visuals, musical themes or plot points to achieve this goal.</p><p>It is important to note that ring-narratives are tilted. They have a high point and a low point which occurs in the middle and the meeting point between beginning and end. The Arthurian legend for example begins low with a Britain in disarray, moves to its high point in the middle - the reign of Camelot - and then goes down again as Arthur and his court are brought low through tragedy. The country falls back into despair and disarray. (By this way of storytelling the myth effectively links the glorious and legendary past to the very imperfect and depressing present of the people who told this story to each other.)
Star Wars on the other hand has its high point at the Beginning-End and its lowest point at the catastrophe in the middle. </p><p>Lastly, while the structure of the story closes the ring and comes back to where it started, the characters and the world of the story are fundamentally altered. So, when Odysseus returns home, he is no longer the man who started the journey and the society, he lives in, is equally fundamentally altered by the events of the Trojan War. A Ring-Myth is meant to explain fundamentally transformative events and processes to its audience.</p><p>This is crucial for my understanding of the Star Wars story Lucas tells, because up to the moment when “A Phantom Menace” starts the GFFA has experienced a cyclically repeating in-world history. The historic conflict between the Jedi and the Sith consists of a certain chain of events which always take place in the same order, with the last event leading to a recurrence of the first event without bringing any significant change to the galaxy or the conflict. Based on the information given in Lucas’ movies this ever repeating cycle looks like this: </p><p>The sith want power and formulate a plan of attack to achieve it. Once they deem themselves ready to take control of the current ruling state, they reveal themselves to the Jedi and attack them immediately (either personally or with an army they lead). The Jedi then fight the Sith in self defense and the violent conflict lasts until the Sith are overpowered by the Jedi and peace returns. Which will then lead into a time the Sith use to recover and plan their next attack … and so on and so forth.<br/>
Now, I believe the six part story of Lucas takes place at the point in the GFFA’s history when this cyclic pattern is broken.</p><p>And it is Palpatine who brakes it.</p><p>He enacts a fundamental shift in the behavior of the Sith, basically adapting their strategy of waging war against the Jedi and elevating it to a new level. The change he makes sounds simple, but it’s devastatingly effective. </p><p>He does not reveal himself to the Jedi until his campaign against them is already almost over and even after he reveals himself to Anakin, he does not personally attack any Jedi. In fact Palpatine wages his war against the Jedi completely through proxies (his apprentices, bounty hunters, droids and finally the clones). This is the basis for a profound strategic advantage. Since he doesn’t attack personally, no Jedi can act against him in self defense. In order to deal with Palpatine a Jedi would be forced to break the Jedi code and transgress against the will of the force. (Mace Windu is desperate enough to try it and is consequently punished for it by the narrative/force.)</p><p>This adaptation of the Sith drives the first half of the story and leads into the catastrophe in the middle. The second half follows this up with the counter adaptation of the Jedi through the actions and experiences of Luke Skywalker, completing the transformation of the conflict and consequently the galaxy. 
Since Luke never gets the chance to formulate his philosophy in clear adages, I can’t contrast his words against the dogmas of the Jedi before him. His actions and the consequences the narrative/force delivers in reaction to them will have to speak for themselves. The following texts are my take on what the transformed Jedi, which return with Luke in the last part of the Star Wars hexalogy, actually look like.</p><p>The ending of Episode 6 is obviously the point where all important story threads and continuous motifes of the Star Wars hexalogy come together. Many key scenes of the other episodes either reference to final confrontation with Palpatine or are variations of these events. In order to understand what is happening there, it will be helpful to examine the reference scenes in Episode 1 to 5 separately first and then look into how they all tie together with Ep.6.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Finding balance in the force</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The question of what it means to bring balance to the force has been widely debated in the Star Wars fandom for decades now. Recently there has been an interesting video on the matter <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-a7x5N2eVFE">here</a> which picks up ideas from the Ring-Theory and expands on them.</p><p>The creator of this video defines balance as the undisturbed cycle of life and death without disruptive meddling by sapient beings. This would result in the continued spread of life (and therefore the force) throughout the galaxy and no-one around who would use the force to destroy life for their own selfish purposes. This reading of the movies sees balance not as reaching equal amounts of light and dark but as reaching a mutual beneficial co-existence between nature as a whole and the self-conscious life forms. And while I disagree with the creator of this video on his final conclusions (the creator is of the opinion that what the Jedi believe to be the will of the force is the same as what the narrative tells us to be the will of the force, and I don’t think that’s the case.), I do share his understanding of “balance in the force”.</p><p>So what do the Jedi believe on the matter?<br/>
The Jedi of the Republic assume that balance in the force can only be achieved when:</p>
<ul>
  <li>There are no Sith.</li>
  <li>There is no one who uses the force selfishly or aggressively.</li>
  <li>All trained force sensitives practice detachment.</li>
</ul><p>The key question is now: Does the narrative of the movies (i.e. the force) agree with the Jedi on all these dogmas?</p><p>I am aware of two points within Lucas’ movies which show moments when balance in the force is reached. The Varykino-Terrace scene in Ep.2 shows us Anakin finding balance on a personal level on the one hand and the ending of Ep.6. when Anakin creates balance in the force at large by destroying the Sith on the other hand.<br/>
So, the first key reference scene I am dissecting here is the Varykino-terrace scene in Ep.2.</p><p>The importance of the Varykino-Terrace scene is pointed out <a href="http://www.starwarsringtheory.com/ring-composition-chiasmus-hidden-artistry-star-wars-prequels/7/">here.</a> It sits exactly in the middle of the Prequel Trilogy between the high point of the Beginning-End and its lowest point at the end of Ep.3. It is also marked as a moment of balance by the Yin-Yang symbol formed in the sky out of the sun and the clouds. But what do these structural and symbolic markers point to in the story?</p><p>This scene follows up on the fireplace scene in which Anakin bared his heart to Padmé and was refused. She drew a boundary and Anakin chose to respect it. The scene shows Anakin finding a way to control his selfish desires and return to a calm state of mind. It is one of his strongest and most mature moments in the entire PT. The dialogue of the scene starts when Padmé joins Anakin on the terrace. While the two talk about Anakin’s nightmares they are also negotiating what their relationship will look like now that Padmé’s boundary is in place. Padmé is aware that the situation is not easy for Anakin and offers to leave which is also an offer to break up their personal relationship entirely and keep it purely professional from then on. But Anakin tells her to stay. He implicitly expresses his wish to continue a personal relationship with her even if it is a platonic one. This is not a scene where two people detach from each other. On the contrary, they are both motivated by their attachment but act selflessly by putting the interest of the other before their own desire (just to be clear, in the fireplace scene Padmé prioritized Anakin’s future in the Jedi-Order and her duty to the people of Naboo over her fledgling feelings for Anakin). Or, to put it in more common language, they reach a consensual agreement on how to conduct the relationship they both want to have. It is this behavior which the scene associates with "balance" on the personal level. </p><p>Another way of determining whether or not the narrative/force deems their actions “right” (meaning in accordance with the will of the force) is to examine the consequences the characters face for their actions and if other characters acting in a similar situation are judged by the narrative/force in a consistent way, too.
Within the ring-narrative Ep.2 is a mirror image of Ep.5. Many, many structural parts, themes and visual motifs in these two movies reference each other. The love stories, too, are inverted reflections. The tilt of the ring-narrative comes into play here again. The PT love story starts at a high point (a “good place”) and subsequently falls down the abyss of disaster, whereas the OT love story starts at a low point and rises up to the happy ending-beginning.<br/>
Consequently Anakin’s ability to accept Padmé’s boundaries is contrasted with Han’s constant violation of Leia’s boundaries (there is a nice video on that 
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWoP8VpbpYI">here</a>). The narrative/force in both movies then goes on to reward one character and punish the other.</p><p>In Ep.2 Padmé develops trust in Anakin and the sincerity of his feelings for her, which allows her to lower her guard and reach out to him. By the end of the movie Anakin can physically be with the person he wishes to be close to. That is narrative reward.<br/>
Han on the other hand is punished by the narrative in Ep.5 for a lot of his previous behavior, his greed and avoidance of responsibility but he is also physically separated from the person he wants to be with. (His advances are not rejected by Leia herself but by the narrative/force.)</p><p>In the respective following movie Anakin becomes controlling and possessive of Padmé which leads to him losing the person most important to him, whereas Han learns to put Leia’s  happiness before his own desire. (When he believes for a moment Leia is romantically in love with Luke, he promises to stop making advances towards her and wishes them well without getting angry or jealous.) This is the catalyst for Han to finally come together with the person he loves. So, Anakin starts with the ability to act selfless in his relationship (prioritize the free will and well being of the other person) and abandons it over the course of the PT, which leads to punishment by the narrative/force, while Han has learned to act selfless towards Leia by the end of the OT and gets rewarded by the narrative/force for it.</p><p>What these moments of balance in personal relationships show in terms of what the force deems the “right” way of handling relationships between people doesn’t fit the Jedi-Orders ideal of “detachment”. It can be explained in two ways, either the force does not deem attachment bad in principle or the force judges people solely on their actions and not on their motivations. We’ll have to look further to determine which one applies.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. The three three-way lightsaber duels between Father & Son & Sith</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>There are three light saber duels between a father, a son and a Sith in the Star Wars movies: </p>
<ul>
  <li>Qui-Gon &amp; Obi-Wan vs. Maul in Ep.1, </li>
  <li>Obi-Wan &amp; Anakin vs. Dooku in Ep.2 and </li>
  <li>Anakin &amp; Luke vs. Palpatine in Ep.6 respectively. </li>
</ul>
<p>Lucas uses variations of certain themes to convey meaning. In each variation characters act different in a similar situation and are facing different consequences for their choices. These consequences then give more clues about the will of the force.<br/>
At first sight the tally of these duels look rather even, there is one loss for the Jedi (Ep2), one victory (Ep.6) and one draw (Ep.1). Since Ep.6 shows us how victory can be obtained, the two earlier duels elaborate on how things can and will go wrong, assumedly because the Jedi acted against the will of the force.</p>
<p>The loss in Ep.2 is easily understandable. Anakin allows himself to be ruled by his negative emotions and attacks first, despite the warning of his master/father. Instead of listening he actually drags Obi-Wan into the attack with him. Consequently he and to a lesser degree Obi-Wan are punished by the narrative/force for attacking and they lose the fight.</p>
<p>The “Duel of the Fates” in Ep.1 is a lot more peculiar. Maul is the aggressor of the fight and is therefore defeated but why does Qui-Gon die? </p>
<p>The reason must lie in a choice he made. Based on the events of the fight it’s common sense agreement in fandom, that Qui-Gon dies because he was separated from Obi-Wan. An additional enforcement of that reading comes through the symbolism of the laser barriers. The two are not just separated by distance but by bright red light. Red symbolizes evil and danger in Star Wars, of course. The visuals of the scene tell us that them being separated is BAD.</p>
<p>Here is the thing though, Qui-Gon could have at any point in his one-on-one fight with Maul fallen back to let Obi-Wan catch up. He is the one who enforces the separation by pressing on in the fight. Maul was greedy to kill his prey. He would have followed Qui-Gon if he had gone backwards or held his position. 
Qui-Gon’s actions are in line with the characterization of his relationship with Obi-Wan in the movie. Qui-Gon was already in the process of detaching himself from Obi-Wan in order to take a new student. It is also in line with the Jedi-Order’s dogma on detachment. </p>
<p>But the narrative/force does not reward him for it! In fact this is the first instance of many in the PT in which a Jedi is punished by the narrative/force for abandoning an established personal relationship. (More on that later.)</p>
<p>One counter argument is often made on this matter. It proposes that Qui-Gon could just as well have acted this way to protect Obi-Wan. I think that is highly unlikely. Qui-Gon was an experienced sword fighter. At this point in the fight he must have been aware that Maul was absolutely capable of taking both Jedi on at the same time, which means one of them fighting alone would face a significantly increased risk of being killed. It follows that their separation opens a path for Maul to kill them one by one. It must have been obvious to Qui-Gon that the safest place for Obi-Wan to be, was right next to him. But he does not act on this. Furthermore, if Qui-Gon would have prioritized a concern for Obi-Wan’s well being, he would have expressed that physically or through some form of communication (a shout backwards to order Obi-Wan to take cover, like he does with Anakin, or as little as a backwards glance to check how Obi-Wan was doing) but he does absolutely nothing of the sort and ignores Obi-Wan’s presence completely. </p>
<p>By looking at the earlier duels, which show variations of the final confrontation in Ep.6, it becomes clear that from the dogmas of the Jedi-Order the rule of “never attack, only defend yourself” is held up by the narrative/force. On the other hand a first example is found in which the narrative/force is resoundingly opposed to the dogma of “detachment”.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Illustrating a system of oppression -  Slavery in Lucas' Star Wars</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Slavery has been a threat to the main characters in Star Wars movies from the very beginning. First, it was subtle, present in the backstory of Chewie, who escaped from captivity with Han's help. In the middle, the threat becomes real for the humans, too, when Han falls into dept-slavery and is reduced to a decorative object on the wall of a slave trader. Finally, Leia is caught and has to fight for her own freedom while her brother is almost delivered into slavery by his own father. Within the oppressive system of the Empire total loss of freedom is always in the cards and something the characters constantly struggle against.</p><p>To understand the role slavery plays for the rule of the Sith (and the final confrontation between Luke and the Emperor) it will be helpful to examine the different forms of slavery in the Star Wars galaxy.<br/>
There are two major modes of slavery in the GFFA. To use a gross oversimplification, I'll call them "the Roman system" and "the American system".</p><p>In the Roman system, the doors which lead to slavery are wide open and everyone could fall through. Even aristocrats or nobles were not completely safe. Under rare circumstances (conquest for example) even they could be captured and succumb to this fate. People could lose their freedom through wars, dept or abduction. On the other hand there was a door which lead out of slavery and while it was very difficult to get through it, the possibility existed.</p><p>The American system on the other head divides the population into groups based on arbitrary characteristics which suit the needs of the rulers. One or several of these groups are assigned to be slaves while others are designated to be slave masters. The roles are fixed. Individuals from slave groups can't attain freedom while individuals from the master groups can not be enslaved. (I’m really, really simplifying here.)</p><p>Evey time in the movies when a princess of Alderaan is enslaved by a Hutt or a slave boy wins his freedom in a race like a Roman gladiator, it becomes obvious that the Roman system flourishes in the GFFA. Still, there are also a number of groups of people whose servitude to others is so ingrained in GFFA-society that almost no one questions their status.<br/>
Those are the droids, the clones and to an only marginally lesser extent the Twi’leks. Lukas' puts a lot of emphasis on their plight in his movies. Especially the first two groups are given critical roles either as full blown speaking roles, antagonists, story catalysts or symbolic mirrors for the protagonists.</p>
<h4>Droids</h4><p>Droids exist on a spectrum from mindless mechanized tools up to fully individualized sapient beings. There seems to be a general rule that the freer droids are (less mind wipes &amp; more self made choices) the more personality they develop. Over time such droids can go down the long path first to sentience and then to sapience.</p><p>This <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WD2UrB7zepo">video</a> by Pop Culture Detective gives a rather extensive tour through all the ways in which droids and their status as slaves were explored in various Star Wars stories. But the author stays focused on the in-world perspective and doesn't include how Lucas uses droid characters as artistic devices to create a physical representation of abstract or psychological motifs in his movies.</p><p>In his audio commentary for Ep. 5 Lucas mentions that he likes to use C3PO's struggles as a physical manifestation of the protagonist's emotional conflicts.<br/>
One of the major themes of Ep. 5, for example, is "putting your self back together". Lucas mentions how Han has to pick up the pieces of his shattered morality and Vader begins to collect what is left of his humanity. C3PO on the other hand is literally ripped in pieces and has to be reassembled by his friends. He becomes a visual representation of the emotional development Han goes through.<br/>
In Ep. 2 the Jedi, Anakin in particular, are forced to leave their identity as diplomats and guardians behind to become soldiers. Again C3P0 lives this experience in a physical way. His head is connected to a battle droid body. For a short time he falls under the control of the evil battle droid programming, just when Palpatine’s influence on Anakin grows. By the end of the battle C3PO is saved by a friend just like Obi-Wan (and they are both salty about that).</p><p>This symbolic connection between the protagonists and their droids works both ways of course. The droids are physically oppressed (with restraining bolts or even torture) and by this indicate the mental and societal oppression of the human main characters.<br/>
In this way Lucas shows that as long as the droids aren't free the humans won't be free either.</p><p>This is also observable in a little scene between C3PO and Anakin in Ep. 1. Anakin is about to leave with the Jedi. He says his good-byes to C3PO and casually mentions that he will ask his mother not to sell the droid. This is not a display of thoughtless cruelty on Anakin's part but rather the attempt of one slave, who is only slightly higher up in the slave hierarchy, to console another slave.</p><p>Slavery systems are notoriously hierarchical. Slaves are used to control other slaves. There is a gradual loss of freedom from the upper layers of society down to the lowest layer, the droids. The result is a pyramid of social control and only the person on the very top is truly free. In German Fascism this social order was called the "Führerpinzip" (“Leader Principle”). Lucas alludes to it as the organizational structure of the Empire. It shines through in the way higher-ups (like Tarkin or Vander) hold life-and-death powers over their subordinates even if these men are admirals in the armed forces. This pyramid of oppression enables a single Sith to rule an entire galaxy. And therefore they always work towards installing this system in societies they wish to control.</p><p>(There is one moment in Lucas' movies when a droid is treated with genuine respect by humans. After the escape from Naboo Sabé and Padmé thank R2D2 for his bravery in battle with words and actions almost like they do on other occasions with human pilots. It's no coincident that the two characters representing the most democratic people in the GFFA - that the audience is introduced to at least - are the ones acting in this way.)</p><p>The fact that droids are oppressed in most parts of the Republic as well as in the Empire, shows that in the Republic the foundation for the slavery-pyramid was already build. </p>
<h4>Clones</h4><p>On this foundation Palpatine then installs the first main pillar for his new Empire in the very heart of the Republic by scaring the senate into accepting the Clone Army.</p><p>The clones are the flip side of the slavery-coin Palpatine creates to stage his war. The clones come from a blue tinted industrialized child-farm standing in the ocean, whereas the battle droids are forged in the red glow of factories in the middle of a desert. Both beings are made for the sole purpose of obediently dying in a conflict that was only started to deliver power to the Sith.</p><p>And as the icing on his cake, Palpatine is even able to rope the Jedi-Order into all of this.<br/>
In theory every Jedi is a free sapient being with a right to personal freedom and individual moral choices. In practice most Jedi defer their decision making to the Jedi Council which in turn defers to the Senate. It is generally expected of a Jedi to accept decisions of the council without argument, just as the Senate expects the council to adhere to their wishes without allowing the Jedi a voice or representation in the Senate. In both cases the submission is not forced but given freely based on education, training and Jedi-culture.<br/>
This is put to a test when the Senate orders the Jedi to become generals in a war. They do have objections, it goes against everything they are and believe in, but we never see them voice any of that to the Senate. For all we know, they simply accept their fate and serve. Lucas portraits them as good people who have blind faith in the authority they submit to. This is an illustration of the dangers of unquestioning submission to authority in a system that only works as long as the people who hold authority don't exploit it.</p><p>The consequences of the Jedi Order’s decision to lead the Clone Army are far reaching. The Jedi now receive their mission objectives and orders from a Sith who gleefully sends them into one death trap after another. Worse still they become parts in the machinery of slavery by taking up the positions of the clone's "overseers". They give away crucial parts of their own freedom and become complicit in the oppression of the clones.</p><p>Do the Star Wars movies propose that this is alright because the Jedi treat the clones humanely?</p><p>No.</p><p>They get absolutely hammered for it by the narrative/force!</p><p>The very fact that the Jedi never argue or stand up for the clones and their right to be free sapient beings enables Palpatine to ultimately use the army as a weapon of mass destruction against the Order.<br/>
This is one of the most crucial instances in which the Jedi’s adherence to their dogma of detachment from the people closest to them is punished by the narrative/force.</p><p>It needs to be emphasized here that the Jedi have good reasons for their deference to the Senate. Palpatine himself is the prime example of why it is a bad idea to have force sensitives in positions of power. Giving Jedi political power won’t solve the problem. In the Star Wars Universe holding power over other people corrupts. Count Dooku is the best case in point for that. He starts out with the best of intentions. All he wanted in the beginning was the power to reform the Republic but the dark side got to him regardless.<br/>
This whole conundrum looks like a tough case of “They are doomed if they do and doomed if they don't”.</p><p>But Lucas does show us a third path.<br/>
Luke and Leia will walk on it on the other side of the Hexalogy’s story ring.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Further reading:</p><p>padawanlost's <a href="https://padawanlost.tumblr.com/tagged/gffa+slavery">GFFA slavery</a> tag<br/>redrikki's <a href="https://redrikki.tumblr.com/tagged/tw%3A-slavery">tw: slavery</a> tag<br/>fialleril's <a href="https://fialleril.tumblr.com/tagged/tatooine-slave-culture">tatooine-slave-culture</a> and <a href="https://fialleril.tumblr.com/tagged/the-droid-revolution">the-droid-revolution</a> tags (they are centered around fialleril's AUs but include a ton of meta) her Star Wars fanworks, which are very much relevant to this discussion, can be found <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fialleril">here</a></p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Darth Vader or How to lose your Self</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Vader has always been hard to pin down. A lot of the faszination with him probably stems from the fact that it is so hard to describe what kind of evil he actually represents. Not least because Lucas clearly distinguishes between absolute unredeemable evil and the pitiful redeemable kind of monster Vader embodies. (Lucas himself uses the word “pathetic” a lot, when talking about Vader.)</p><p>Attempts have been made to cast Anakin’s story simply as “the making of a Nazi” but that doesn’t quite fit, especially when he is contrasted with the classic Nazi character in Star Wars: Tarkin.</p><p>Tarkin is cold and calculating, always searching for the most efficient solution to his problem. (His problem being all people who do not submit to their assigned status as the subservient “lesser”, of course.) As a true technocrat, he revels in the destructive power of technology like the Deathstar and enjoys inflicting pain as punishment on his enemies. He puts himself “above” those he devalues as “lesser” and expresses his acute megalomania in the most pseudo-rational way possible. This man has fully internalized the Empire’s ideology and believes everything he does to be right.</p><p>Vader, on the other hand, is in many ways his exact opposite. He despises the Deathstar and shows contempt for people who don’t do their own killing. Vader never hurts and kills for pleasure or the satisfaction of megalomania, instead his conversations with his son reveal how keenly aware he is of his own shortcomings. Furthermore there is little rationale to his violent outbursts, he is impulsive and seething with anger. And finally, the tears he sheds over his crimes in Ep.3 show that he is aware his actions are wrong, which raises the question of why he commits them.</p><p>In short Vader, despite being a mass-murderer, doesn’t fit the Nazi-sterotype.<br/>
So, what is he?</p><p>I believe Darth Vader represents the archetype of “the man without self” or more precisely “the man who lost his self”. This, too, is an authoritarian character archetype albeit a much, much older one than the modern Nazi and this distinction matters.</p><p>Let me explain.</p><p>Firstly, for this text I’m defining a person’s “self” as the combination of their unique personality, their individual set of morals and the ability to express both.</p><p>Anakin starts his life as a slave. That means from the very beginning he had no right to make decisions about himself. He has been blocked and hindered from expressing his self all throughout his formative years as a young child.<br/>
But he is Shmi’s son. Her mothering allowed him to develop a healthy sense of self (“I am a person and my name is Anakin!”), a strong personality and clear morals (“He knows nothing of greed.”). These peculiar circumstances are the basis for a person who has his own understanding of right and wrong but no ability to act on it. All his youth Anakin lives under masters who tell him what to do instead of teaching him how to act on his own judgment in a healthy way.<br/>
Consequently, he goes on to become a Jedi who was taught complete submission to the will of the force, as interpreted by the council. All of Anakin’s young and clumsy attempts of advocating for what he thinks is right (like saving the slaves or protecting people he loves) or his needs (for example affection from people he cares about) are shut down by various Jedi masters.<br/>
While it is not wrong to limit the kind of destructive tendencies and urges which Anakin acts out in some instances, the narrative/force demonstrates unambiguously what awful consequences follow out of the complete detachment which the Jedi ask of Anakin. The death of his mother would have been easily avoidable, had Anakin been allowed to keep in contact with his mother. While Anakin’s reaction to her death is clearly wrong, the Jedi are depicted to be unaware of how their detachment from the galaxy allows suffering to spread.</p><p>As I laid out in the last chapter, the Jedi practice what they preach up to the highest level both in terms of detachment and submission to authority. But when it comes to submitting to a higher power there is one exception to the rule: Qui-Gon Jinn. </p><p>He was the only Jedi who was in consent negotiations with the council. Qui-Gon had found a way to respectfully but unyieldingly insert his own judgment of any given situation into the decision making process of the Jedi council. He never simply bowed his head to them. Instead he forced them to see eye to eye with him and negotiate a compromise between his convictions and their reasoning. That he remained respectful of the council's position and wouldn’t petulantly do however he pleased, is shown through his adherence to their boundaries. He does not teach Anakin actively as long as they forbid it but at the same time makes it crystal clear that the negotiations on the matter aren’t done yet. Also, and this is important too, he never argues with the council for selfish reasons. He says “I will do, what I must.”, not “What I want.” and only offers to train Anakin himself when the council denies the boy acceptance into the order.<br/>
I believe it is this quality that Lucas refers to, when he says that Qui-Gon would have made a difference to the story, had he survived and become Anakin’s teacher. He could have taught Anakin how to assert himself in a healthy way.<br/>
Alas, this would not have helped with the detachment-issue, since Qui-Gon practiced that himself. Which is why I don’t believe Qui-Gon’s survival alone could have saved the Jedi or the Republic. After all, the Prequels are such a well constructed tragedy that one change to the story alone could never have saved the day. (Just ask any FanFic writer in the fix-it genre, with the Prequels it is never that easy.)</p><p>This underlines why, for all of Obi-Wan’s many qualities, his deference to the council is a problem in his mentorship of Anakin. Obi-Wan, despite being known as The Negotiator, only argues against the council’s wishes once. This happens when he puts his master's wishes over the council’s judgment. It is noteworthy here, that his master’s request is both painful for him and against his opinion but he submits to it anyway.<br/>
Likewise in dealing with the Senate Obi-Wan has a multitude of contrary opinions and correctly recognizes a lot of problems but submits to them regardless just like he has been taught. He usually solves this inner conflict by avoiding politicians and the senate whenever possible. In a way, he provides Anakin with a role model that instructs him to shut up and bow his head no matter how strongly he disagrees with the authority in front of him.</p><p>And in addition to all this, Anakin’s rebellion against the well-intentioned but ill-practiced culture of submission of the Jedi is corrupted by Palpatine into a desire for power. The rationale the Sith offer is that power and aggression are needed to assert one’s self against the rest of the world. According to the Sith freedom lies in the ability to control others, so if Anakin wants Padmé to stay with him, he needs to control her (or more specifically her physical life).<br/>
When this course of action fails him, too, Anakin/Vader adopts a twisted version of the Jedi teaching of detachment as a Sith. He distances himself from all living beings, never caring for the fate and pain of the individuals he kills. In order to achieve the “greater good”, as which he has defined the dead-quiet “peace” the Empire enforces, he submits himself completely to the authority of his master.<br/>
He becomes a tool in the hands of Palpatine and works his hardest to quell all doubts and moral questions he still carries within himself in a constant battle to suppress his self. In this way he embodies the old archetype of the gladiator-slave from antiquity or of a slave-general from ancient Persia very well. He actively reduces himself to a self-less extension of his master’s will. This is verbally alluded to in the movies, when Leia calls him a dog on Tarkin’s leash, and visually expressed through the chain around his neck.</p><p>This motif is further illustrated by the strong symbolic links Vader shares with the two most prominent slave groups of the GFFA, the droids and the clones. Both of which are renderings of the same motif. They are “men without selfs”.<br/>
Vader is obviously depicted as a human-droid-hybrid. “More machine than man,” as Obi-Wan puts it. The droids provide an inverted mirror image to Darth Vader’s origin story. They can walk the path from tool towards human-like self while Anakin regresses backwards from human towards a tool-like weapon. With droids it only depends on their maker to determine if they will be “good” or “bad”. They are doomed to be puppets to be molded by an authority. Just like “the man without self” who's actions are only ever as “good” or “bad” as his master's intentions.</p><p>And because Lucas has not piled enough symbolic links over each other in this matter, he makes Vader the leader of an army of men without selfs: the clones.<br/>
In the movies the clones are brainwashed into obedience and sameness by the Karminoans. They are people without real free will i.e. without the ability to express personal moral beliefs. They can not object to an order just because they think it is wrong.<br/>
While in the movies the Kaminoan brainwashing-training is explanation enough for their loss of self, the Clone Wars TV Series does individualize the clones. It tells the story of how the clones develop individual personalities and selfs and then follows this up by another layer of the people-without-self-motif. The chips are a plot device to steal the hard-won individuality and decision making ability from the clones again. It’s like a Matryoshka motif, within the first version of the motif sits another version of the same motif. (This kind of storytelling is employed in the Lucas’ Star Wars Era more than once and is incidentally also common in myth. It can be found in the story of Jonah and the fish in the Bible for example.)</p><p>I believe all of this, the stories about the droids, the clones and most crucially about Anakin becoming Darth Vader is Lucas’ way of showing the consequences of training a person into total submission in the name of the greater good. As he tells us in the most crushing of ways such a person has no defenses to assert themselves and say “No” once the “good” authority is replaced by an “evil” one.<br/>
In excruciating detail the two trilogies lay out all the complex dehumanizing systems which lead to the loss of choice both on the individual level through Anakin’s/Vader’s story and on the society wide level through the fate of the droids and clones. The movies record the many forms of physical, emotional and mental violence necessary to cripple a person’s self and how the “successful” completion of this process leads to even more widespread pain and suffering. In short, the story tells us all of this is wrong.</p><p>And because the narrative and the Force are one, the Force passes the same judgment.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Further reading:</p><p>padawanlost's <a href="https://padawanlost.tumblr.com/tagged/gffa+slavery">GFFA slavery</a> tag<br/>redrikki's <a href="https://redrikki.tumblr.com/tagged/tw%3A-slavery">tw: slavery</a> tag<br/>fialleril's <a href="https://fialleril.tumblr.com/tagged/tatooine-slave-culture">tatooine-slave-culture</a> and<br/><a href="https://fialleril.tumblr.com/tagged/the-droid-revolution">the-droid-revolution</a> tags (they are centered around fialleril's AUs but include a ton of meta) her Star Wars fanworks, which are very much relevant to this discussion, can be found <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fialleril">here</a></p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Consensus-building in political movements in Star Wars</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>In the quest of finding out how Luke transforms the Jedi it’s important to not only look at the changes Luke makes on a personal level but also to ask what an organization would look like that works in accordance with the will of the force. After all, Star Wars has always been as much a story about individual characters as about concepts of social structures like a republic or a dictatorship.</p><p>There is only one example of an organization or political movement in Lucas’ hexalogy that is rewarded by the narrative/force for their collective actions.</p><p>The Alliance.</p><p>Unfortunately, it‘s presented in the movies more as a sketch than a fully defined institution. The audience gets to see what the Alliance does but in most cases not how it functions or how it is structured internally.<br/>
Still, it is possible to learn a few of their key characteristics. For one, the movies make it quite clear that the Alliance comprises members who are willing to sacrifice themselves for the greater good (the Bothans come to mind here) just like the Jedi of the Order in the Republic. Or to formulate it in Jedi-terms: the fighters of the Alliance are acting selfless.<br/>
Furthermore, just like the Jedi of the republican Order, all members of the Alliance are committed to a commonly agreed cause.</p><p>A first unique characteristic can be found by looking at the organizational structure of the Alliance. There is something similar to a military command structure in place and it seems to work fluently during battle, but interestingly, in many cases when strategic decisions are made, the Alliance doesn’t use this command structure.<br/>
Instead of ordering anyone into missions Mon Mothma and Leia (who are the stand-ins for Alliance leadership) ask for volunteers. They usually make a proposal for a battle plan and then ask who is willing to do it. Nobody is forced to carry out the attack. This goes even further, when we see Han giving the Falcon to Lando for the mission, which means the people, who are carrying out the attack, have a say in how they want to implement the strategy and which resources they will use to do it. There is a strong sense of self-determination for individual Alliance members present.<br/>
Regardless of how realistic that might or might not be, I believe these interactions are put into the movie on purpose. They are significant because they show that the Alliance practices on the institutional level what Qui-Gon Jinn tried his hardest to practice with the Jedi council on a personal level. The different members of the organization negotiate the terms of engagement of their joint work even across different levels of the hierarchical structure the organization is built upon. All members of the Alliance agree on the aim of their operation but they form a consensus about the means and strategies to achieve it. This virtue is one of the key differences of the Alliance to the Empire, where soldiers and officers have no control about how they live or die, and to all large organizations presented in the Prequels including the Jedi!</p><p>Because the Prequels are a dark mirror image of the Original Trilogy in many ways, it is also helpful to this discussion to look for an inverted mirror image of the Alliance to learn more about it.</p><p>There is indeed an evil rebellious organization active during the era of the dying Republic: The Separatists.</p><p>By including the Separatists in the story Lucas makes it clear that rebellion is not a positive thing in and of itself. It matters why and how people go in opposition to a system of governance.</p><p>So, what are the motivations and strategic actions of the Separatist?<br/>
For a start, all their members are selfish.<br/>
The politicians involved are isolationists. Their underlying motivation is less about the self-determination of their citizens and more about the increase of their political power once the Republic can no longer put restrictions on them.<br/>
Many of the other most prominent members are representatives of capitalist companies and therefore “naturally” incentivized to be selfish and greedy. And last but not least the Sith members of the separatists are a manipulative, treacherous and murderous pair. </p><p>All this means the Separatists are never able to truly unite around a common goal because the various members are all only interested in accumulating money or power for themselves.<br/>
But the break-down of their internal cooperation goes further than that. When Palpatine orders the leaders of the Separatist to Mustafar, they have no choice but to comply, despite the fact that they are quite powerful themselves and do not want to be there at all. In short, they have no say in whether they live or die because the structure of the Separatists leaves no room for self-determination or strategy negotiations any more.<br/>
In the end, one part of the group decides to annihilate another part of the group, effectively ending the Separatists as a political movement. Just like the Republic, they are defenseless against an actor working to destroy them from the inside.</p><p>The Alliance on the other hand never has this problem, the group seems to be completely immune to this kind of threat.<br/>
While it is never shown in the movies directly how Palpatine attempts and fails to infiltrate the Alliance, it would be illogical to assume he never tried after being so successful with the strategy multiple times before. Which begs the question of how the Alliance pulls it off.<br/>
This issue is never addressed outright in the movies. I believe,  they show the Alliance’s winning characteristic in a more roundabout way.</p><p>The finale battle of Ep.VI is key here.<br/>
It is set up in a way to show the interconnection of the individual Alliance fighters. No sub-group of the Alliance would have been able to bring about the victory over the Imperial forces on their own. In fact, no lone Jedi (or Jedi pair) would have been able to win this conflict either. If Luke had been acting alone, even in case he could have overpowered the Emperor on his own, the Alliance would have been pulverized by the Imperial fleet! Instead it needed Lando and Wedge to take out the Death Star, the ground forces with Leia and Han to deactivate the shield to allow the attack on the Death Star in the first place and the Ewoks to gain access to the shield generator.<br/>
The strong personal ties between the many members of the Alliance are working in their favor here. Everyone is doing his or her utmost to protect the others. When this behavior is contrasted with the actions of the Jedi Order it becomes clear how it is throwing a spanner into Palpatine’s usual strategy playbook.<br/>
Palpatine turned both Master Sifo-Dyas and Master Dooku towards the dark side and used their insider knowledge against the Order. The two Jedi went through a profound personal transformation which went completely unnoticed by the Jedi. Yoda should have known his former padawan better than almost anyone else and he is absolutely clueless about what happened to him in the beginning of Ep.II because he detached himself from Dooku. In the Alliance meanwhile there are multiple instances in which one character recognizes that something is up with somebody else because of their close relationship. A change in personality of the magnitude that a fall to the dark side causes would simply not go unnoticed among the Alliance rebels because of their strong attachments to each other.<br/>
But even if an infiltrator could hide him- or herself, like Palpatine does in the senate, such a person could not start sending Alliance troops into suicide missions like Palpatine does with the Jedi, because Alliance soldiers have a right to self-determination and a seat at the strategy table. Unalterable suicide orders would receive push-back and make the officer giving them out extreamely suspicious because Alliance members make the safety of their fellow soldiers a priority. </p><p>To be clear here, yes, Alliance members are risking their lives in ridiculously dangerous plans but these plans always include cover for each other. When Luke, for example, sends C3PO and R2D2 into Jabba’s palace, not only is R2D2 secretly armed the whole time, Lando is also already in place to provide protection if necessary. This is a luxury the Jedi of the Republic rarely afford each other. Anakin and Obi-Wan are an exception, and they are extremely successful because of it, but still the Order does not adopt this strategy on a wider scale because of the attachment it is built on. </p><p>In the Alliance, meanwhile, all participants are determined to protect their fellow comrades and are willing to put their lives on the line for the others. This behavior constitutes selfless action motivated by attachment and it is combined with a culture of consensus negotiations across all hierarchical levels.<br/>
The fact that the Alliance is also the single most successful organization in Lucas’ Star Wars movies underlined that this conduct is in accordance with the will of the Force.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. All threads lead to the throne room</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>As I’ve mentioned before, Lucas likes to give depth to the mythological story he tells by using matryoshka motifs. He takes important ideas and re-frames them several times on different levels and scales of his storytelling. That helps the audience to understand the story because as long as they recognize the meaning of a motif in one of its forms they can connect this meaning to its other forms even if these are more complex or unusual.</p><p>One of the more subtle examples of this is the use of various versions of “fog” as a motif for the blindness of the characters to an incoming attack. It can be seen in the very beginning of Ep.1 when Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan are ambushed with poisoned gas, after that in Ep.2 when the clones and the Jedi are fighting in the sandstorm clouds of Geonosis (which in turn are an inverted mirror image of the clouds surrounding the floating city on Bespin, also the site of an ambush) and it is finally verbalized by Yoda when he talks about the shroud of the dark side.<br/>
Additionally, the different versions of the motif grow progressively larger. First the fogg only obscures a room, then a giant battlefield and finally the whole future.</p><p>There is one matryoshka motif in particular that creates a connection between the Jedi’s downfall and Luke in the Emperor’s throne room.<br/>
It can be found in the progression of archetypal roles Jedi characters and the Jedi Order assume over the course of the story.<br/>
The smallest of these matryoshkas comes along in the shape of Qui-Gon Jinn and the development he goes through. One often repeated piece of criticism leveled at Ep.1 is that the movie ostensibly doesn’t give even one of its central characters a classic character arc.<br/>
That is not true for Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn who does change in fundamental ways over the course of the movie. However, this change doesn’t happen in his personality but in his actions and the archetypal roles he fulfills. (The complaint also ignores Padmè’s considerable development. Alas that’s beside the point here.)</p><p>Qui-Gon starts out as a Jedi diplomat in the beginning of the movie but is forced shortly after to abandon his original task and become the bodyguard of a political leader instead. Obi-Wan’s sarcastic attitude towards this shift indicates that this is considered a bit beneath the Jedi’s usual purview. But it is still the right thing to do considering the circumstances, so Qui-Gon steps into this new role without hesitation.<br/>
When the conflict on Naboo escalates to an uprising against the occupation he is forced to change his role again, effectively becoming a soldier. While Master Jinn is more skilled by far than the Naboo pilots and guards, he nevertheless seeks to end a conflict with violence at this point. This stands in stark contrast with his original objective to not allow violence to erupt in the first place. His story then ends with his tragic death. This transformative process which Qui-Gon goes through is the small matryoshka.</p><p>Lucas uses Qui-Gon as the stand-in for the entire Jedi Order and the chain of roles he takes on in Ep.1 (Diplomat → Bodyguard → Soldier) foreshadows the exact same development for the Jedi as a whole over the course of the Prequels.</p><p>The Order starts out as the peacekeepers, negotiators and diplomats of the Republic. One could even go so far as to say, the Jedi are the institutionalized glue that keeps the Republic together. Traditionally, they have been the ones facilitating consensus negotiations among all the planets and peoples that make up the Galactic Republic. They are connectors of quarreling parties within the Republic who often do not want to be (re-)connected.<br/>
Picking up from there, Ep.1 and 2 show how the Order can no longer fulfill this function and is more and more reduced to protection-duty for threatened politicians. This also means the Jedi have no chance to stop the war from breaking out. Once that happens they are drafted into the Army as active combatants. And just like Qui-Gon the Jedi die in the end. Their death completes the large matryoshka of this motif in the Prequel Trilogy.</p><p>On the other side of the narrative ring, in the Original Trilogy, Luke goes through the same transition of roles in reverse. He does so on an individual level, becoming an inverted mirror of Qui-Gon Jinn.<br/>
The major archetypal role Luke takes on while building his connection to the Force in Ep.4 is that of a soldier. He brings about victory by use of brute force but also the Force which is implied to be his first step towards Jedi-hood.<br/>
In the following (Ep.5), the transition is shown from him acting as a soldier in the opening of the movie towards more Jedi training in the second act. This leads to a shift in his role as he begins to act as a protector, aiming to extract people out of harmful situations instead of destroying targets as part of a squadron.</p><p>Whereas Qui-Gon has to work to keep Queen Amidala from being abducted and/or assassinated, Luke repeatedly works to get people out of different forms of incarceration in Ep.5 and 6. Their respective actions form a pair of inverse mirror images. The Jedi in the Prequels try (and in the long run fail) to uphold the freedom of their charges, while Luke (successfully) works to give freedom back to people. One story goes downwards, the other upwards. The role of protector is the same, though.<br/>
The final stage is reached when Luke becomes the first Jedi in three decades who is able to end a conflict without violence. Instead, he forges a family-bond of mutual protection with Vader, an seemingly unreachable enemy. Luke completes his journey to become a Jedi the moment he steps into the role of the connector.</p><p>This alone is a major argument for the understanding that the narrative of the Star Wars movies is in favor of at least some specific forms of attachment.</p><p>That being said, there is one central counter argument to this reading of the Star Wars movies that is discussed in fandom a lot. It points to Luke’s failure to save his friends in Ep.5.<br/>
In “The Empire strikes back” Luke rushes to the rescue of Leia and Han against the grave admonishments of his Jedi Masters. Things indeed go south and he fails in his attempt to best Vader. In light of the severity of the consequences the narrative/Force levels on him, he must have committed a serious transgression. But does that mean Obi-Wan and Yoda were right?</p><p>This issue comes back to the question of action vs. intent. Does it matter to the narrative/Force why somebody acts or only what they do?<br/>
Luke’s motivation is clear. It’s his attachment-fueled desire to save his friends.<br/>
His actions, on the other hand, are not so clear cut. He doesn’t actually run towards Leia to free her, when they meet in Bespin, instead he searches out Vader and attacks him in anger. He acts alone when he could have coordinated with Leia, Chewbacca and (if he had made the effort to learn about the situation on the ground) Lando instead.</p><p>As I’ve pointed out, “attacking out of anger” is consistently punished in Lucas’ Star Wars movies by the narrative/Force and “fighting alone” contributes heavily to Qui-Gon’s death, therefore the ending of Ep.5 for Luke would line up with the other movies if it’s based on his actions.<br/>
The same consistency can not be found when dealing with Luke’s intentions. Because later in the story, in Ep.6, he acts based on his attachments twice, first to save Han and in the end to save his father, but in these instances he is successful. Luke did not change his motivation and he did not let go of his attachments. The only thing that changed were the strategies and methods he employed. That means, the only way to explain the narrative shift from failure to success is through his actions.<br/>
Luke’s intentions were never the problem, how he acted on them was.</p><p>Now that we have arrived at Ep.6, let’s tie down some loose ends.</p><p>Once Luke arrives in the throne room, the third iteration of the three-way-duel between the father, the son and the Sith takes place. Or to be more precise, two fights happen.<br/>
The fighting starts when Vader manages to provoke Luke into attacking him. This effort from Luke, as well-intentioned as it might be, is doomed to fail just like it did on Bespin. The tide turns however, as soon as Luke recognizes himself in his father. The moment when Luke throws away his weapon is not just notable because it marks Luke’s transition into the role of the connector, as mentioned above, it also effectively ends the first fight he had started with Vader. And crucially, his refusal to give into his anger provokes Palpatine into starting a new one. This is actually the first time in the entire hexalogy Palpatine personally starts a fight. After all these years his megalomania and lust for cruelty finally get the better of him.</p><p>And consequently, he loses.</p><p>This second fight is also the first of the three three-way-duels in which father and son act in defense of each other. Luke and Anakin are able to overcome the emperor because they decide to stick together.<br/>
But how does this alliance between father and son come about?</p><p>Luke’s side of things is relatively straightforward. He has to overcome his rage and remember what he came there for: getting his father to freedom.</p><p>Vader’s change of mind is not that self-explanatory. While anyone who has met Anakin “I’ll attach to my people like a kraken to its prey” Skywalker will not doubt that he cares about his son, he is still Darth Vader at this point, “the man with the destroyed self”. Anakin is trained to disregard his self, his morals and his emotional needs as worthless. What he wants doesn’t matter, because he has surrendered his entire being to his master. He even says as much to Luke before they enter the throne room.</p>
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p>Luke: “I've accepted the truth that you were once Anakin Skywalker, my father.”<br/>
Vader: “That name no longer has any meaning for me.”<br/>
Luke: “It is the name of your true self.”<br/>
&amp;<br/>
Vader: “You don't know the power of the dark side. I must obey my master.”</p>
</blockquote><p>That Luke steps in front of his father to protect him is critically important to Vader’s transition back to Anakin. In the moment when Luke throws away his weapon he declares two things more important to him than his own life:<br/>
Firstly, the integrity of his soul i.e. not falling to the dark side and secondly, his father.</p><p>This marks the first time since Anakin’s relationship with Padmé that somebody puts worth and faith into him as a human being and asks nothing in return. The fact that Luke does this empowers Anakin to act on his own conviction i.e. in accordance with his own self.<br/>
But that is something he has to do himself. Luke knows by then that his father sits in a prison that is at least in part of his own making and therefore can’t simply be dragged out of captivity like Han from Jabba’s palace. Anakin surrendered his self to Palpatine and he is the only one who can reclaim it. What Luke gives Vader instead is proof by example that it is possible not to take the devil’s bargain of exchanging your self for the power of the dark side and the certainty that there is someone who cares enough about him to want him to save himself, someone who would even risk their life to protect him while he works on the saving-himself-part.</p><p>Their mutual selfless support ensures their mutual freedom.<br/>
This includes a safeguard against the possessive form of attachment that doomed Anakin in the Prequels, because they do not just protect the other from being controlled by the malevolent Sith master but also from their own control.<br/>
And this is my understanding of the equilibrium called “Balance in the Force” in Star Wars.</p><p>It is restored here again on a personal level because of the re-forging of the connection between father and son and, for the first time in a long time, “Balance” is achieved at large once the sith are both dead, so, there is no one around anymore who would use the Force selfishly or destructively.<br/>
While Anakin dies (which is unavoidable at this point considering the ledger he has racked up with the force) he is granted existence as a force ghost, proving that his last actions were indeed in accordance with the will of the force.</p><p>Together, Anakin and Luke find a way to bridge the contradiction between attachment and selflessness that the Jedi order so adamantly believed to be irreconcilable.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Further reading:<br/>Fialleril's excellent character study on Luke <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/18538078/chapters/43938640#workskin">everything I have ever learned</a><br/></p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. Extrapolating a New Jedi Order</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A pattern is a wonderful little thing.<br/>It’s like a building block that can be molded into exactly the right color and shape to fit the need of a piece of art. People use it to create almost anything. Patterns make everything easier. Once a pattern is established and its construction is understood, it becomes effortless to continue it. Which is why they play such an outstanding role in the oral traditions of myth. Passing down stories over generations from one mind to another without the aid of writing while keeping their meaning intact is an incredibly taxing task. But when a pattern is established in the narrative, even parts that might have elapsed fallible human memory can be reconstructed again and again, just like it is easier to remember the second part of a rhyme based on the rhythm and sound of the first part than memorizing two lines of prose.</p>
<p>Of course, that does not mean continuation is the only way for an artist or storyteller to work with a pattern. There are a thousand and one things to do with it. Patterns can be extended or narrowed down, they can be broken or transformed, deconstructed or rearranged or inverted or integrated into different, larger structures. The possibilities are endless. And any of these options can be executed masterfully or poorly. All can be infused with profound meaning or left utterly devoid of it.<br/>None of these options is more right or wrong than the others.</p>
<p>This rule also applies to Star Wars stories. There are just as many Star Wars expanded universes out there as there are (small and large) kids immersing themselves in this world and extrapolating places they want to go to or stories they want to hear. The bountiful narrative structures and patterns in Lucas’ Star Wars movies help to guide these dreams of exploration and extrapolation. They are probably one of the main factors that have made the Star Wars universe so immersive for so many people over such a long period of time.</p>
<p>I firmly believe there is no “right” or “wrong” way to continue a story and when I’ll write down my extrapolation of what the narrative/Force might want for a new Jedi Order in the following, then this is just me feeding both my inner kid and my love for patterns. At no point is it meant as a disparagement of the old or the new EU.</p>
<p>This is not an attempt to reconstruct what a sequel trilogy by Lucas would have looked like. I don’t think it’s possible to do that simply because he has the tendency to vastly expand the scope of his story with every installment. The interaction between the continuation of already existing narrative structures and the major new additions is impossible to predict. (Hence, nobody could have seen Ep.1 coming.)<br/>Instead, this is a) giddy self-indulgence (sorry for that) and b) an exercise in building a new story out of narrative patterns to show what they are capable of.</p>
<p>All that being said, let’s have a little fun in this sandbox, shall we?</p>
<p>So, what could the adaptation of the Jedi through Luke in the aftermath of Ep.6 look like, if it were based on the motifs and structures I described in the previous chapters?<br/>This is where the self-indulgence comes in. Going further, I will only consider versions of a new Jedi-Order that are reasonably successful. For one, the ring has an upward tilt in the third trilogy, which means things should turn out well in the end. And secondly, I’m making these muffins, and this is the flavor I would like to have. Therefore I’m assuming here that Luke will find a way to act in accordance with the will of the Force.<br/>By the end of the battle of Endor he was following four governing principles for his own actions and the Force rewarded him for it. The characters don’t necessarily have the awareness to come to this conclusion, but optimization for maximum success would suggest to use these principles as the basis for the new Jedi Order.<br/>Luke’s principles (or dogmas) are:</p>
<ul>
<li>A Jedi must act <strong>selfless</strong>.</li>
<li>A Jedi must work for <strong>the greater good</strong>, i.e. work to uphold the well-being of the group, the society and the environment one is part of.</li>
<li>A Jedi must practice <strong>consensus negotiations</strong> both with one’s authorities and those in one’s care.</li>
<li>A Jedi must uphold the well-being and freedom of self of the people one has relationships with, because acting in defense of another without gaining anything personally (except for the continued existence and freedom of that person, of course) and without violating the greater cause does count as selfless action and is an expression of the <strong>interconnectedness</strong> of all living beings on the personal level.</li>
</ul>
<p>The first two dogmas have a long standing tradition in the Jedi Order of the Republic, but the latter two represent a transformation of the old dogmas of “submitting to authority” and “detachment”. As I stated in the beginning, a transformation of the Jedi became necessary because Palpatine had adapted the way the Sith waged their war against them. At first glance, looking only at Lucas’ six movies, it seems like the Sith are extinct when the credits roll on Ep.6. It appears as if no further defense against them is required, but the mirror nature of the ring narrative demands for Sith’ to be present in a third trilogy. <br/>The structure present here only defines stepping stones for the “what”. The narrator who continues the pattern must come up with the “how”. All the Expanded Universes provide numerous options for sequel trilogy Sith’, of course. The pattern doesn’t care about which specific duo is chosen, only that they stand in the tradition of Palpatine and keep using his strategies.<br/>Now the question becomes, could Luke’s four principles create suitable defense mechanisms against Sith’ in the mold of Palpatine?</p>
<p>A non-self-revealing Sith like Palpatine has two main avenues of attack against the Jedi:<br/>Firstly, by attaining a leadership position in an institution which holds authority over the Jedi they gain the power to interfere with, disrupt and manipulate the Jedi as they please. In times of war such a position even comes with the right to order them into life threatening situations. In this way Palpatine was able to weaponize the “submitting to authority” dogma of the Jedi against them.</p>
<p>Just like the Alliance, a new Jedi Order could develop resilience against these kinds of attacks by holding the other members of the power structures they are a part of to account through consensus negotiations.<br/>Since the OT does not elaborate much on this defense mechanism, the practical implementation in laws, processes or political rituals is a wide open question. It seems obvious that the Jedi would need to have some kind of voice/representation in a new legislative body (most likely a new senate) and some form of veto-right against orders, but as soon as mutual oversight between the Jedi Order and the government is on the table there is a lot of room for error. Of course, this only means there is enough potential for conflict there that the search for a working solution could be part of the story around the efforts to build a new Republic.</p>
<p>Palpatine’s second winning strategy against the Order was using people close to the Jedi as weapons against them. This was only possible because of their dogma around practicing “detachment”.<br/>Despite what every other run-of-the-mill action or superhero movie might insist on, in Star Wars relationships are not a weakness. On the contrary, caring about people is strategically the right thing to do when the enemy is a Sith like Palpatine. By taking a vested interest in the well-being and freedom of the people they had relationships with, the Jedi would have been drastically more likely to see the many attacks through this avenue coming.<br/>A few examples:</p>
<ul>
<li>The Jedi could have gone looking for Syfo-Dyas and might have found the clones much, much sooner.</li>
<li>Qui-Gon could have survived Maul, if he had stayed with Obi-Wan.</li>
<li>Yoda could have known Dooku was falling to the Dark Side.</li>
<li>Obi-Wan could have known Anakin’s dreams about his mother were really that bad.</li>
<li>The Jedi generals could have advocated for the free will of their clone soldiers and might have discovered the true extent of the control measures the Kaminoans implemented in them.</li>
<li>Obi-Wan could have taken the wounded Anakin from Mustafar to lock him away or keep him company while he died and would have deprived the Emperor of his enforcer.</li>
</ul>
<p>By no longer only acting in defense of themselves, a new generation of Jedi would be able to disarm the trap of “divide and conquer”. Instead of allowing future Sith to simply take away the freedom of everyone around them one by one until they stand alone, a new Jedi Order could create a vast network of allegiance that provides mutual protection for all its people.<br/>No course of action in this vain would be easy or conflict-free. Of course, the Sith would try to exploit the inherent danger of love turning into possessiveness and greed with everything they got.<br/>Balancing selflessness and attachment means walking on a knife’s edge. There is always the risk of people falling. But there are so many stories pre-written into the notion!</p>
<p>So, while these new dogmas are no guarantee for success by any stretch of the imagination, they do provide the Jedi with a fighting chance, unlike in the times of the Prequels when they were all but doomed to fall prey to Palpatine’s new Sith.<br/>The two parties of the conflict are evenly matched again and at least as far as the pattern goes, none will be able to permanently defeat the other, not even at the highest point of the ring narrative. We have to keep in mind here that the Sith were present in the introductory moments of Ep.1, and therefore the ring structure demands them to be present in the very last moments of a theoretical Ep.9. Because, as I mentioned in the beginning, a myth talks about metamorphosis, once the largest of all the rings in a theoretical ennealogy (9-part story) finally closes from Ep.9 to Ep.1 the conflict between the Jedi and the Sith will have completed its transformation but it certainly does not end.<br/>That is a key characteristic of ring narratives. They don’t come with true endings, neither happy nor sad.</p>
<p>Beyond these guiding principles for the new Jedi’s conduct sits the question of their story. Within Lucas’ hexalogy the downfall of the Jedi Order in the Prequels is a motif without a mirror image. Their narrative ring has a gaping whole that has not been closed. On the other hand, the path a new Jedi Order would have to take in a theoretical third trilogy can be seen as told in reverse in the Prequels. Just like Luke they could evolve from soldiers to protectors and finally to connectors. And all of these stages come with a string of fascinating implications and questions in tow.</p>
<p>The fight against the Imperial armed forces is obviously not over with the battle of Endor. So, the pattern’s requirement that the nucleus of the new Jedi Order must start out as active combatants slots easily into place with overall in-universe developments.<br/>It would also mean that Luke’s first new padawans would be adults, because the Alliance, thankfully, has shown no precedent of allowing children onto battlefields.<br/>This raises some challenging questions. How, for example, will this new, still informal group of Jedi relate to the families of new padawans, some of which might be married or even be parents themselves?</p>
<p>It’s fun to imagine Luke suffering through endless arguments between the ghosts of Obi-Wan and his father on the matter, but on a purely practical level, allowing the families of padawans to travel with the armed forces is only possible to a certain extent. There are no happy-ever-afters here, but rather the harsh realities of people trying to keep relationships alive over long periods of separation. Also, the very real threat of death in combat means Luke would have to learn how to keep people with numerous attachments from falling to the dark side in times of crisis and learn it fast! Just because he figured it out for himself, does not mean he automatically knows how to teach it.<br/>In short, Luke would have his work cut out for him from the very start.</p>
<p>It would be possible to let the progression of the Jedi from soldiers to protectors coincide with a consolidation of an Alliance controlled space in the galaxy. In Ep.2 the Republic fractures into pieces, so in reverse the Alliance has to deal with the splinters of the Empire. The longtime goal is doubtlessly unification. But for the time being, it makes sense for them to establish a secure home sector and push to dismantle the structures of imperial government and power in the systems they freed.<br/>The missions of the Jedi would automatically change in tandem.<br/>In parallel to Luke’s action in the original trilogy, these new Jedi would indeed come to free the slaves. To take the imperial pyramid of authoritarian power apart, all people put in chains by slavers, may they be Wookies, Twi'leks or human children, must be freed. It is even possible to imagine an inverted mirror image for the creation of the clone army that deals with the disarmament and deradicalisation of stormtroopers.<br/>And no, neither the slavers nor the stormtroopers would just roll over and let that happen.</p>
<p>Instead of engaging with an enemy army from “outside” their own group of allegiance, the Jedi would get involved in a violent conflict directed “inwards” with the aim of destroying the social and economic structures that keep slavery, crime and corruption in place. These power structures enabled Palpatine’s rise in the first place and they need to be eradicated to allow a new democratic government to form. This means the new Jedi can not just be the bodyguards of democratic politicians like their Prequel-counterparts but must become investigators of all plots meant to corrupt or subdue them. So yes, I think, Anakin was right on that one, and Obi-Wan should have listened.</p>
<p>Which brings us to the fact that both middle episodes in Lucas' trilogies have an inter-generational conflict between a father/master &amp; son/padawan pair as one of their main themes. In both cases the son/padawan struggles with overwhelming emotions while the master/father seeks to get the younger to submit to authority (Obi-Wan's "... and you will learn your place, young one," is rather telling in that regard.) There are large differences, of course, where Obi-Wan stands in for the benevolent authority of the Jedi, who mean well and expect willing submission, Vader is just brutal in his attempt to break Luke's resistance. <br/>Continuing this pattern means that Luke, having moved into the position of the well-intentioned teacher, is bound to fall into a similar trap as Obi-Wan. There has to be a disconnect to his student and a failure to listen on his part. The difference is that Luke's story moves upwards, so the ring narrative expects him and his padawan to figure their mess out in the end. (A limb will be lost anyway, because the pattern is merciless in that regard.)</p>
<p>Their personal conflict then becomes a reflection of the challenge to establish consensus negotiations within the Jedi Order. We have seen that Qui-Gon was capable of it, but he couldn't pass it on to Obi-Wan. It is not enough for an individual to get it right, it needs to become part of Jedi traditions. Whatever solution Luke and his padawan figure out, together they will shape the teaching culture of the transformed Jedi Order.<br/>Maybe they establish a formal ritual for debate, maybe padawans are granted a say in what and how they learn. It's hard to say. This is one of the places where the pattern requires a solution that is not already well established in mainstream storytelling or even in real life. I mean, what does an education look like that gives a student real agency?<br/>Sokrates and his teaching by questions and dialogue comes to my mind. A technique that is also practiced widely in a multitude of forms in East Asian philosophical traditions and therefore might be something that could fit the Jedi.</p>
<p>This would also be the time, when the new Jedi Order starts to establish a formal internal organization. One way of expressing a new relationship between the generations within the Order would be for all its ranks (Initiates, Padawans, Knights and Masters) to send a representative to the new Jedi council. Maybe term limits for councilors and their election instead of appointment would be considered, too, like many people in the fandom have suggested before.<br/>Anyhow, including dissenting voices in the new Jedi Order means the serenity and calm of the Jedi of old moves out of reach. Luke’s Jedi must become capable of withstanding the strains of internal dissonance and conflict without breaking apart. And how they manage to do that is certainly a story worth telling.<br/>It won’t be easy, though, both from the in-universe perspective as well as from the narrator’s perspective. The Jedi must develop communication skills and rituals of collective decision making they never had before while the storyteller has to juggle the requirements of multiple patterns at once.</p>
<p>In connection to this I’ve come across the complaint that ring structures are too narrow and predictable to make for exciting stories or that they tie the narrator down too much.<br/>This argument overlooks that the pattern only ever deals with the recurrence of a motive, demanding its variation, but it doesn’t pin down the context. (Star Wars is an extreme case here, since Lucas has filled it up with patterns to the very brim, so they all put constraints on each other. But that is just his personal brand of narrative insanity and would not apply to a story with only one ring or matryoshka pattern.)</p>
<p>The motif of “The Fall” of the troubled student that happens in the middle installments of the trilogies (Anakin jumping into the “street canyons” of Currosant and Luke falling down the ventilation pit in Bespin) can serve as an example here.<br/>The pattern expects “The Fall” to be present in a theoretical Ep.8, too, but it is silent on reasons and circumstances for this event. How the respective students fall is dependent on their individual characters and personal challenges. This means, “The Fall” is a visual motif that changes its meaning with every iteration. It therefore challenges the storyteller to examine the student character and understand why they would come to an edge and fall down.</p>
<p>Another example, that works the other way around, is the symbolic place the new Jedi Order will occupy in the fledgling democracy: the Temple.<br/>In the Prequels the Jedi live in tall ivory towers far removed from the people not just physically but obviously emotionally, too. A Jedi Order that strives to stay connected to the galaxy's peoples will not separate itself from society like this.<br/>The Prequel-era temple is a symbolic representation of the idea of “detachment”. Keeping the pattern of inverted mirror images up, means to find a home for the Jedi that visually represents the transformed dogma of “interconnectedness”. And since the pattern doesn’t say “how” that looks like, a multitude of possibilities opens up.<br/>To mention only three: the Jedi could forgo a temple completely and develop a vast network of schools or monasteries instead. They could also live in a city-like complex build on a labyrinth of bridges. Or, my personal favorite, a motif by Esama from her wonderful story <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/13003122/chapters/29733783">On the other side</a> could be used. Instead of a building, the Jedi Temple could become a huge space station capable of wandering the galaxy.<br/>In this case the pattern is fixed on the meaning and leaves the depiction open.<br/>This is crucial. Narrative patterns are not based on pure repetition, but on “rhymes” like Lucas so often said. Change is one of their core characteristics and where there is change, there is inherently a demand for creativity.</p>
<p>The last developmental stage of the new Jedi Order seems the most ambitious from a storytelling standpoint to me. Because fulfilling the pattern there, means to acknowledge and emphasize the inherent heroism of something that mainstream public opinion considers overly complicated and boring.<br/>The Jedi were the connectors of all the pieces that formed the Galactic Republic in the beginning and they need to be that again in the very end. This creates the nagging question of how to turn the task of persuading numerous quarreling parties to find compromise in a non-violent way into a fast paced action-adventure. It is a hard nut to crack. And there is not much precedent in Lucas’ movies. After all, Qui-Gon and Luke inhabit this role only for about one scene each in Ep.1 and Ep.6.</p>
<p>The objective at least is clear.<br/>There will be an election.</p>
<p>The event that propelled Palpatine into power in Ep.1 must be outmatched by a republic-wide expression of the will of the people. Only then can the first High Chancellor of the new Galactic Republic be a true paragon of democracy.<br/>Before the Galaxy far, far away can see this rebirth of democracy, though, the Jedi will have to become their most heroic selfs to ensure all citizens of the Republic have the freedom to choose their own political fate. And if history has taught us anything, it is how vulnerable elections are, how adamantly they need to be protected. Since the high point of the ring is so close here, the Jedi would be entering a new prime at this point. So it is not an exaggeration to say, they would go at it with the utmost of skill, wit and empathy, all the while putting their lightsabers aside.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>I started this text with the question, “What is the will of the Force?”<br/>It’s time now to finally get back to it.</p>
<p>In fandom this question is usually interpreted as, “What does the Force want?”<br/>People are looking for the meaning inside the story.</p>
<p>The answer is given in the movies through the rules by which the narrative/Force reacts to the character’s actions. It “wants” the kind of behavior it rewards. The four principles that describe Luke’s actions are an example for that. It also strongly discourages certain other behavior with loss and pain. The “If you start a duel, you lose”-rule falls into the latter category. There are probably more of these rules present in Star Wars that I have not found yet.</p>
<p>This set of rules can be seen as the “morale of the story” and it’s different from the various in-universe philosophies that groups like the Jedi Order or the Sith pass on to their students. That means, the Star Wars movies include several layers of philosophical meaning and even the greatest in-universe thinkers like Yoda are not completely reliable sources when it comes to understanding the Force.<br/>Countless books have been written to connect the adages of the Jedi to real world ethics and religions or to pin down the philosophical leanings of George Lucas. Something like that is far above my pay-grade. All I can do is to caution people not to mix up the different layers of meaning in an attempt to keep them from stumbling into the same traps the characters in the movies fall into.</p>
<p>This is not quite the end yet, though, because there is another way of interpreting the question.<br/>One could also ask, “Can be defined what kind of thing “the will of the Force” actually is?”</p>
<p>The answer I’ve found for this ties into my fascination for the complexity of the narration in Star Wars. It really is “an intricate clockwork”, as Lucas called it, and the will of the Force is one rather important cog in this clockwork-story.</p>
<p>The rules, by which “the will of the Force” expresses itself in the movies, constitute a narrative pattern just like rings and matryoshkas.<br/>In this case it is one that carries “the will of the narrator” or the moral of the story. But it is possible to separate content and function. The same functionality could be used by another storyteller to convey a different meaning.<br/>Because of that, stories which have a “will of the narrator”-pattern are not objective. The chain of events that form the plot are directly linked to what the storyteller considers “good” or “bad”. The same basic premise would lead to different storylines if told by narrators with opposing ethical convictions.</p>
<p>But there is one characteristic all stories with a “will of narrator”-pattern share. The pattern creates a logic of causality for the events that make up the story. The characters act and the universe reacts. That means from an in-universe perspective the characters have true free will. They dictate all major developments with their choices. So, when Yoda says, “Always in motion is the future,” he is right. There is no fate in the Galaxy far, far away or any other story with a “will” for that matter.</p>
<p>Another interesting thing happens when the “will”-pattern interacts with a ring pattern. Because in this case “the will” can be used to give the ring its tilt.<br/>The downwards slope is built out of the bad outcomes that inevitably follow when characters act against “the will”. Whereas the upwards slope is created out of the positive developments that happen when characters who were put in similar situation make better choices the second time around. In this way “the will” becomes the guiding principle of the variations that the ring pattern asks for.</p>
<p>I love this. Instead of relying on concepts like fate or destiny, stories with a “will”-pattern talk about change and growth by giving their characters real agency in-universe. Inherently they are about people who learn to take responsibility for their own actions. And they create stories in which people can influence and shape the world they live in. The characters wouldn’t even need supernatural abilities to enact this change. The narrative structure of this kind of story does not require the protagonist to be superhuman at all, because every choice, however small, causes an in-universe reaction.</p>
<p>To me, this feels like a balm against the profound helplessness that the real world instills so easily. However, such a story does not merely provide escapist fun. Star Wars itself shows how this type of storytelling could be used to talk about situations in which people do have agency in the real world. It’s not just about guys jumping around with glowing sticks. Far beyond that, Lucas tells us a tale about forming relationships on eye-level, taking part in elections and standing up for other people’s freedoms. There is just so much potential for building small and grand stories out of these patterns that remind people that they can enact change within themselves but also in the world.</p>
<p>Which has been a very roundabout way of saying:<br/>The will of the Force is a storytelling device and everyone can use it.</p>
<p>So, if all of this reads to you like one, long, rambling invitation to “write-your own-adventure” … well, you are not wrong …<br/>I’m craving stories with these patterns and maybe someone who stumbles over one or even creates something in this vein, will feel inclined to point me a helpful finger in the right direction to find it.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Thank you for spending a little time with me in this sandbox.</p>
<p>May the Force be with you.</p>
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